Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)

 

I'm nothing if not dedicated and if a horror series has four movies in it I'm going to see all four.  Eventually.  Here we have the final movie in the original Toxic Avenger series with Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV.  We start off with a recap of the first film and then we are told that parts two and three didn't really happen.  What is this?  Halloween 2 and 3?  Well, we can take it as the truth because this isn't any normal voice over telling us this, that was Stan Lee himself.  Even if he is credited as "Peter Parker".  This one is loaded by cameo appearances and the comic book God is just the beginning.  There's Lemmy from Motorhead, Ron Jeremy who is part male porn star and part hairy ass Bigfoot.  Actually maybe it's not his foot we're concerned with.  So the film begins with a terrorist group known as the Diaper Mafia (see they are all adults wearing diapers hence the name) who take over a school for special kids.  Our favorite radioactive superhero (if you don't count a lot of other more well known ones that is) arrives to save the day.

 

 

David Mattey (Hancock and Strange Nature) plays Toxie this time and he is joined by Joe Fleishaker (Terror Firmer and I Spill Your Guts) as Lardass, Toxie's dedicated side kick.  His girlfriend Claire (and also Sarah) is back as well only since the second and third film didn't really happen, she's still blind and she's played by Heidi Sjursen (Skin Crawl and PDA Massacre) this time.  Toxie and Claire are trying to have a baby.  Lloyd Kaufman is back again to direct as well as co-write along with Trent Haaga who also wrote Deadgirl and Cheap Thrills.  Gabriel Friedman and Patrick Cassidy, two of Tromaville Production's favorites, also help with the script. When Toxie is saving the kids in the school an explosion causes a temporal rift to open and a parallel universe (Amortville as it is called, see what they did there) switches Toxie with Noxie.  Noxie is an evil version of Toxie.  Tromaville's own scream queen Debbie Rochon also appears as Ms. Weiner.  James Gunn has a cameo as does Corey Feldman, Eli Roth, Tiffany Schepis, and even Hugh Hefner makes an appearance as The President of the United States in his final film role.  OK it's really not his last one but imagine if that was the last time we saw him in a movie or on TV, now that would be funny.  And while he did film the scenes (at the Playboy mansion no less) his lawyer's demanded his scenes be cut, which Kaufman did.  It is referenced in the credits during the "Special Thanks" part where there is a "No thanks to Hugh Hefner's lawyers" mention.

 

 

 

 

As with the other three films, Toxie 4 is a splatter horror comedy with tons of blood and gore but not very good acting.  This is a Tromaville Production from our buddy Lloyd Kaufman so it's not going to be loaded with acting legends but by now we know what we're in for.  I'm pretty sure nobody is accidentally watching this knowing nothing about the other three films.  We're even more over the top offensive in this one with racism, rape scenes, abuse of the disabled, and lots of sex and nudity.  There's even a bunch of characters that looks like Adolf Hitler.  Perhaps the funniest parts of the film are the bits of Breaking News we get reported to us by twin comedians The Sklar Brothers.  Most of the time I was watching this I kept wondering to myself just what the hell was going on because it's a mess but it's a glorious mess.  It might be the best best film in the series if this is your kind of thing.  I'm giving this three and a half disembodies heads in a box out of five.  Yep, I think it's my favorite of the four or the two is we're not counting the third and fourth film.  But goddamn it I'm counting them.